I've just been involved in a play for the last week that involves a lot of audience participation. The show was The Farndale...Mikado (not it's full title, I'll stress); the premise is that an awful amateur dramatics company are attempting to put on The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan. Anything that can go wrong, does.
To get the audience into the mood of such a play, it is necessary to have a "pre-amble", where the actors and crew create the environment of the show as the audience enter the auditorium. It could be a prop being constantly moved from one side of the stage to the other; a director constantly losing his grip minutes before the show has even started proper; curtains that refuse to close conventionally. Yes, it takes a little getting used to but the audience eventually gets the basic idea.
When you go to see a piece of theatre, I truly believe that you gain so much more of an experience from it the more involved you are. When I directed The Diary Of Anne Frank in 2010 I particularly wanted the set to come out into the audience, for the only entrance and exit to the outside world to be the door that the audience had come into. For that purpose the curtains were open as they arrived. I plan a similar concept for my next project, Art, due in June this year, and a production that I will report back on from time to time in this blog.
I think this is why pantomimes are still as popular as they ever have been. They're about having fun, going out and being entertained; in the case of Anne Frank it means more - you get to learn more because you're more immersed in the story, you're more aware of what's going on around you. We stop being merely entertainers and take on the second role of educators. Farndale could be argued as being more panto-based than anything else, but it still has the same effect.
There's nothing wrong with a familiar box-stage production where everything happens on stage and the audience sit un-bothered and seemingly unnoticed by the people acting. However, as the continuing growth in the trend for one-on-one theatre has shown, theatre needs to once in a while shake itself and its audience up a bit; the quicker it does it, the better.
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Rough Contrasts
The BBC have recently, as always, begun transmitting programmes which are in stark contrast of each other in terms of whether or not they're actually any good. Three of them will be examined here briefly: Faulks On Fiction, South Riding and Mrs Brown's Boys.
Faulks On Fiction and South Riding are both part of a year long celebration on the BBC of the written word, and both show that this season is full of immense promise. Though slightly rushed and selective, Faulks On Fiction was a wonderful mainstream prime time glimpse into what makes a story great, focusing on four separate characters: The Hero, The Lover, The Snob and The Villain. There were both obvious choices - Sherlock Holmes for Hero, Lady Chatterley for Lover, etc - and others that were perhaps not so obvious - James Bond as Snob. Sebastian Faulks, writer of some great works himself including the horrifying Birdsong and the utterly brilliant The Girl At The Lion D'Or, proved a winning presenter and guide through this world. The one drawback was that, though many famous literary figures were interviewed, the interviews for each were kept to two short snippets. Really, Faulks should have had either longer interviews or cut them all together. The programmes would have run slightly better that way. Nevertheless, it was still an entertaining and fascinating journey.
More satisfying still was Andrew Davis' three-part adaptation of South Riding, Winifred Hotlby's novel of a town in 1930's Northern England facing the Great Depression and great change. Davis concentrated more on the doomed potential romance between the two antagonists - the optimistic Sarah Burton, played by the excellent Anna Maxwell Martin, and the gruff land owner in debt Robert Carne, the dependable David Morrissey. Sadly, this decision to focus mainly on this storyline took the plot away from what could have been a fascinating portrayal of Northern England during this time. The final episode contained some rather obvious results after an admittedly surprising tragic twist, and the final five minutes did feel a little rushed. But the performances from all, in particular Martin and Penelope Wilton, ensured this was still an enjoyable piece of drama.
On completely the opposite side of both decency and taste is Mrs Brown's Boys, a so called sitcom which has become the latest in a long line of what this writer likes to call "Marmite TV", as it's popularity with some people is truly inexplicable. An always packed studio audience seem to enjoy it too, as Brendan O'Carroll drags up to play the title character, a filthy old Irish woman trying to interfere with her grown children's' lives. The scripts are a mess, drifting from broad humour to filthy innuendo to sudden attempts at pure drama. At one point Mrs Brown jokes with her daughter Cathy (Jennifer Gibney) about Cathy's ex-husband, then shocking reveals that she knows he used to beat her. It just doesn't work. At times, the episodes allow mistakes made by the actors to be shown, O'Carroll walking through the different sets in the studio at one point to pick up a handbag he left behind. These "mistakes" even look staged. Inexplicable.
Never mind, though, BBC - two out of three sure isn't bad. And with the return of the brilliant Waking The Dead this Sunday for it's final season, TV just gets better and better for the Beeb.
Faulks On Fiction and South Riding are both part of a year long celebration on the BBC of the written word, and both show that this season is full of immense promise. Though slightly rushed and selective, Faulks On Fiction was a wonderful mainstream prime time glimpse into what makes a story great, focusing on four separate characters: The Hero, The Lover, The Snob and The Villain. There were both obvious choices - Sherlock Holmes for Hero, Lady Chatterley for Lover, etc - and others that were perhaps not so obvious - James Bond as Snob. Sebastian Faulks, writer of some great works himself including the horrifying Birdsong and the utterly brilliant The Girl At The Lion D'Or, proved a winning presenter and guide through this world. The one drawback was that, though many famous literary figures were interviewed, the interviews for each were kept to two short snippets. Really, Faulks should have had either longer interviews or cut them all together. The programmes would have run slightly better that way. Nevertheless, it was still an entertaining and fascinating journey.
More satisfying still was Andrew Davis' three-part adaptation of South Riding, Winifred Hotlby's novel of a town in 1930's Northern England facing the Great Depression and great change. Davis concentrated more on the doomed potential romance between the two antagonists - the optimistic Sarah Burton, played by the excellent Anna Maxwell Martin, and the gruff land owner in debt Robert Carne, the dependable David Morrissey. Sadly, this decision to focus mainly on this storyline took the plot away from what could have been a fascinating portrayal of Northern England during this time. The final episode contained some rather obvious results after an admittedly surprising tragic twist, and the final five minutes did feel a little rushed. But the performances from all, in particular Martin and Penelope Wilton, ensured this was still an enjoyable piece of drama.
On completely the opposite side of both decency and taste is Mrs Brown's Boys, a so called sitcom which has become the latest in a long line of what this writer likes to call "Marmite TV", as it's popularity with some people is truly inexplicable. An always packed studio audience seem to enjoy it too, as Brendan O'Carroll drags up to play the title character, a filthy old Irish woman trying to interfere with her grown children's' lives. The scripts are a mess, drifting from broad humour to filthy innuendo to sudden attempts at pure drama. At one point Mrs Brown jokes with her daughter Cathy (Jennifer Gibney) about Cathy's ex-husband, then shocking reveals that she knows he used to beat her. It just doesn't work. At times, the episodes allow mistakes made by the actors to be shown, O'Carroll walking through the different sets in the studio at one point to pick up a handbag he left behind. These "mistakes" even look staged. Inexplicable.
Never mind, though, BBC - two out of three sure isn't bad. And with the return of the brilliant Waking The Dead this Sunday for it's final season, TV just gets better and better for the Beeb.
Friday, 4 March 2011
Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim is getting a Special Recognition award later this month at the Laurence Olivier Awards. Last year the maestro turned 80 years old, a birthday that heralded a season of his work at the Donmar Warehouse, plus his very own Prom concert and the publication of the first volume of his "sort of" autobiography. Not bad for a bloke who's not really written much these last ten years or so.
There's not really a problem with Sondheim, truth be told; there can be no doubt that he is a genius, a legend of American Musical Theatre. Whether it's solely the lyrics that he often derides now from earlier shows such as West Side Story or Gypsy, towards the grand masterpieces of Company and Sweeney Todd, it is clear to all that Sondheim is a special kind of composer. His work during the 70s and 80s in particular redefined what contemporary musical theatre was - gone were the fun and frolics of the Golden Age of Broadway; now as the Great White Way found itself seething under corruption and pornography, Sondheim's true visions could be unleashed: the uncertainties of relationships in Company, the mistakes of reminiscing in Follies, the tragedy of vengeance in Todd.
In the 80s, when audiences began to tire of this darkness amidst a growing AIDs crisis and the boom time of Wall Street, Sondheim changed direction again; this time he became more philosophical. Sunday In The Park With George, arguably his second masterpiece after Todd, looked in depth at what it meant to be an artist. Into The Woods is a surprisingly old fashioned twist on old fashioned fairy tales, but works magnificently. Assassins and Passion, his last great works in the 90s, were smaller affairs, and more and more his work has - perhaps sadly - been downgraded into review type shows such as (the admittedly brilliant) Putting It Together.
Give the guy a break, mind - he is 81 this year. It seems a shame that his work seems thoroughly rooted more in the hearts and minds of middle class audiences, the audiences who could afford to go to the theatre at that time, his own background, when the messages within them are so universal. What a great joy it was then that Tim Burton, one of the few great auteur's we have in this time, took on the challenge of bringing Todd to the screen, introducing a whole new age to the brilliant songs, score and bloodcurdling, chilling lyrics. A new production of this epic is set for later this year at Chichister, with Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton set to play the leads. No doubt people will go to see it more because of the film than the original productions, but so much the better; Todd is one of the few film versions of Sondheim's work that hasn't butchered a classic.
His influences are certainly felt today; they run all the way through Rent, for example. Now is the time for a major revival. The sooner, the better. We may not get much more out of him.
There's not really a problem with Sondheim, truth be told; there can be no doubt that he is a genius, a legend of American Musical Theatre. Whether it's solely the lyrics that he often derides now from earlier shows such as West Side Story or Gypsy, towards the grand masterpieces of Company and Sweeney Todd, it is clear to all that Sondheim is a special kind of composer. His work during the 70s and 80s in particular redefined what contemporary musical theatre was - gone were the fun and frolics of the Golden Age of Broadway; now as the Great White Way found itself seething under corruption and pornography, Sondheim's true visions could be unleashed: the uncertainties of relationships in Company, the mistakes of reminiscing in Follies, the tragedy of vengeance in Todd.
In the 80s, when audiences began to tire of this darkness amidst a growing AIDs crisis and the boom time of Wall Street, Sondheim changed direction again; this time he became more philosophical. Sunday In The Park With George, arguably his second masterpiece after Todd, looked in depth at what it meant to be an artist. Into The Woods is a surprisingly old fashioned twist on old fashioned fairy tales, but works magnificently. Assassins and Passion, his last great works in the 90s, were smaller affairs, and more and more his work has - perhaps sadly - been downgraded into review type shows such as (the admittedly brilliant) Putting It Together.
Give the guy a break, mind - he is 81 this year. It seems a shame that his work seems thoroughly rooted more in the hearts and minds of middle class audiences, the audiences who could afford to go to the theatre at that time, his own background, when the messages within them are so universal. What a great joy it was then that Tim Burton, one of the few great auteur's we have in this time, took on the challenge of bringing Todd to the screen, introducing a whole new age to the brilliant songs, score and bloodcurdling, chilling lyrics. A new production of this epic is set for later this year at Chichister, with Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton set to play the leads. No doubt people will go to see it more because of the film than the original productions, but so much the better; Todd is one of the few film versions of Sondheim's work that hasn't butchered a classic.
His influences are certainly felt today; they run all the way through Rent, for example. Now is the time for a major revival. The sooner, the better. We may not get much more out of him.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
The Oscars 2011 - Verdict
As is becoming more and more the case, the Academy Awards this year were full of unsurprising moments, with two exceptions - namely, two of the biggest ones.
Money and safe bets could have been placed on the acting categories. Colin Firth achieved what he should have been awarded last year, Best Actor, for his role in The King's Speech, while The Fighter took home the two Supporting Categories for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, who brilliantly dropped the f-bomb in her acceptance speech. Another boundary broken, Oscar. Arguably the most satisfying awards were to the three most deserving - Toy Story 3 winning Best Animated Film, Aaron Sorkin winning Best Adapted Screenplay for his fast-paced, witty and wonderful script for The Social Network, and Natalie Portman winning Best Actress for the role of her career in Black Swan.
Considering how David Fincher won the BAFTA for Best Director it was indeed a surprise for Tom Hooper to walk away with the Oscar instead for The King's Speech; the film pulled a double whammy under this writer's feet certainly by beating The Social Network to Best Film, a feat that one didn't think the Americans would go for given the Golden Globe award the latter garnered.
As with last year and The Hurt Locker's success, it seems the Academy is turning more and more to the smaller budget, more independent feeling movies when confronted with more expensive hitters. The reward for the summer blockbusters is usually the more effects-based gongs, and so Inception deservedly walked away with those. Sadly, one feels that it would have had no real look in for the other main categories, especially considering how Christopher Nolan was snubbed with no nomination for Best Director.
Two surprises to end a rather unsurprising night; at the least this year one feels that the right films were being recognised with nominations, and that will be enough to bring them further into the public field. With the more independent fare such as Winter's Bone, this is only and always a good thing.
Money and safe bets could have been placed on the acting categories. Colin Firth achieved what he should have been awarded last year, Best Actor, for his role in The King's Speech, while The Fighter took home the two Supporting Categories for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, who brilliantly dropped the f-bomb in her acceptance speech. Another boundary broken, Oscar. Arguably the most satisfying awards were to the three most deserving - Toy Story 3 winning Best Animated Film, Aaron Sorkin winning Best Adapted Screenplay for his fast-paced, witty and wonderful script for The Social Network, and Natalie Portman winning Best Actress for the role of her career in Black Swan.
Considering how David Fincher won the BAFTA for Best Director it was indeed a surprise for Tom Hooper to walk away with the Oscar instead for The King's Speech; the film pulled a double whammy under this writer's feet certainly by beating The Social Network to Best Film, a feat that one didn't think the Americans would go for given the Golden Globe award the latter garnered.
As with last year and The Hurt Locker's success, it seems the Academy is turning more and more to the smaller budget, more independent feeling movies when confronted with more expensive hitters. The reward for the summer blockbusters is usually the more effects-based gongs, and so Inception deservedly walked away with those. Sadly, one feels that it would have had no real look in for the other main categories, especially considering how Christopher Nolan was snubbed with no nomination for Best Director.
Two surprises to end a rather unsurprising night; at the least this year one feels that the right films were being recognised with nominations, and that will be enough to bring them further into the public field. With the more independent fare such as Winter's Bone, this is only and always a good thing.
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